BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #52:

 

Am I actually supposed to be worked up about cocaine inside the White House when no President has ever been held accountable for sideshow bombings of Cambodia, contra death squads, Mission Accomplished 2003, Abu Ghraib, extrajudicial kill lists, and the Jan. 6 attempted coup-all serious offenses committed by previous office holders who faced zero consequences for these actions? 

Some of these guys are long gone, and some are still out walking the streets.

And these are just the crimes I can name off the top of my head.

Nope. No. Uh-uh. None of that matters. Not a bit. None of that.

Someone left some toot dust, so it must be the fall of the republic.

Rolls eyes, makes sarcastic dick-beating motions with both hands.

MANDATORY RULE #1:

Movie adaptations of comic books are now required to adapt all printed contents including all advertisements, in-house editorials, checklists, and letters pages. 

So, if there's an advertisement for a Dungeons and Dragons module, perhaps the hero(es) will embark upon a dungeon crawl as a secondary plotline.

If there's a Sam Goody's ad pushing an Alice in Chains four CD box set including an interactive CD-ROM featuring music videos and b-sides, then perhaps the villain listens to such music while plotting evil schemes. A fight scene can take place amidst digital projections of retro CD-ROM content to facilitate a stylish action set piece. 

Ads for the video game Frogger may translate into a character quirk that requires that they stomp on frogs when frogs are seen by the relevant quirk-bearing character. Comic relief of some kind is sure to ensue.

Checklists may also be incorporated as foundations for character quirks: perhaps the protagonist is, indeed, a comic book collector?

Fan comment from letters pages may be sprinkled in as various red herrings and/or gratuitous softcore scenes of awkward dry humping.

In-house editorials may be adapted as worldbuilding dystopian propaganda broadcasts where appropriate.

So you see, when adapting comic books advertisements, fan blather, and corporate preening may all contribute to enhanced creativity of derivative audio-visual outputs.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #51:

How come they don't hire the Jackass guys to re-invigorate the Indiana Jones movies? Even at 80, Harrison Ford's still got it-it's the overall production that's grown stale and conservative. Embed Ford within raucous Jackass shenanigans, and that box office'll stack itself, my dudes!

Also, the premises and titles pretty much write themselves:

Indiana Jones and the Off-Road Tattoo

Indiana Jones and the Fuckery of the Fart Mask

Raiders of the Lost Rocket Cart

Indiana Jones and the Romance of Beast Man

Ring me up, Hollywood, and let's make some fuckin' cash money for a change!

OPTIONAL RULE #11:

If the Hero wears a mask then the Villain may also wear a mask or not wear a mask, but the Villain's cannon fodder must be maskless. The cannon fodder may wear uniforms to express their loyalty to the Villain and to facilitate unit cohesion. The cannon fodder should certainly be encouraged to express a bit of quirky, comically neurotic individuality to contrast with the monumental visage of the Hero who so clearly embodies unswerving ideals of justice and so forth. A masked Hero gives you more flexibility in terms of casting-you get a recognizable face for the Hero when they are unmasked; and then you have the option of cycling through as many stunt players as necessary-due to injuries, paralysis, death,etc.-for when the Hero is masked.

If the Hero does not wear a mask then the Villain may either wear a mask or not wear a mask, but the Villain's cannon fodder are required to wear masks and uniforms. The cannon fodder must be especially anonymous and conformist when the Hero's beautiful face is boldly displayed for all to see. Also, masked cannon fodder allows you to re-deploy the same ten or so stunt performers over and over again for the big one-against-all battles. 

Villains may wear masks to perform a vicious Opposite Day spirit of antagonism when fighting a maskless Hero. Villains may wear a mask to imply some secret kinship with a masked Hero. Villains may go unmasked to play up a spirit of defiance to the masked monumentality of the Hero. A Villain may also go maskless in order to present a charming image to work demagoguery upon hearts and minds all the better to foment a populist uprising against the masked Hero. 

Always bear in mind the complexities of masking and not-masking when determining the dynamics among Heroes, Villains, and cannon fodder.

MOVIE REVIEW: SKINAMARINK (2022)

Written, Edited, and Directed by Kyle Edward Ball

Cinematography by Jamie McRae

Produced by Dylan Pearce

Starring

Lucas Paul

Dali Rose Tetreault

Ross Paul

Jaime Hill

. . .

"Come upstairs."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

The camera is in the house. It's looking mostly at the house itself, and the stuff inside the house. When the camera does dwell on the people inside the house it can be disturbing. Like the old philosophical warning about staring too long into the abyss, because the abyss is gazing right back at you. The camera is seemingly a mobile staring abyss thing, warping from one obtuse setup to another.

None of this was obvious to me, at first, because I basically assumed Skinamarink to be some sort of found footage flick, and, in the early going, it looks like it could be that. The look is rigorously grainy, and obviously a digital post-production effect, but it's done with such artistry and commitment that the artifice gives no offense. You stare at the swirling shadows within shot after static shot of empty corners and bare walls and your mind starts to conjure patterns from the visual noise. You try to impose order on Skinamarink, and Skinamarink sorta meets you halfway as it reveals itself to be an avant garde haunted house show, but the eeriness of the inescapable house,  the slow burn pacing, and the phantoms you invent within your mind-that's where it all truly lives.

There are kids in the house. They're watching cartoons on the TV in the downstairs living room. Adult authorities are upstairs. Legos are all over the floor before the TV. There are strange whispers. Chairs and dolls stick to the ceiling. Sometimes indistinct voices are subtitled, sometimes they are not subtitled. There's some scenes where doors and windows inexplicably disappear. Things escalate. It is both cryptic and upsetting. There's no escape from the house. Something is taking over. It's a bit like that Julio Cortazar short story where the brother and sister find their childhood house being slowly invaded room by room by some sinister something. 

Skinamarink withholds all answers. It makes you sit in a sinister place with just enough ambient light to see disturbing entities and occurrences. Amusingly, its handful of jumpscares are underplayed almost to the point of anticlimax. Skinamarink is more "Universe winding down into Absolute Zero" than anything else. The pacing is unhurried, some might say it's too slow, but the duration is part of the experience. If you want to watch the crashing cars, that's not this movie. 

Skinamarink offers visual fascination almost as an end unto itself. It could easily function as a video installation. Just put it on for the atmosphere once you've absorbed it as a narrative experience, if you want.

LOADING SCREEN WISDOM #15:

 

MONEY COMES. MONEY GOES. BUT YOU CAN NEVER GET YOUR TIME BACK.

THE NEW GRIND: INNER HEAVY PARTICULATE GAINS

 

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #12: INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023)

The gravely disappointing lack of a mirror match between Elder Indiana and Digitally De-Aged Indiana pretty much sinks it.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #50:

 

Wouldn't it be easier if the U.S. Supreme Court just published a weekly sales paper? 

How many yachts does it take to get movement on various far right wet dream bench legislations? 

It's not entirely clear, is it? 

I mean . . . we know. We've known for years. I'm just advocating for precision and clarity.

Plus, a sales paper is a kind of catalog or menu, isn't it? People ought to know what services are on offer from these lifetime-appointed mercenary ideologues.

Oooo, they're having a two-for-one deal this week! One dark money bribe gets you a Post-Roe Reality and the Death of Affirmative Action!

Put a justice's kid through some elite private school, and that judge's ankles will get raw from the grabbin', baby!

The more you spend the more you save!

The Supreme Court has been widely understood for years as pay-for-play just like every other All-American institution, so why be so secretive, so pretentious about shit, eh?

What could be more American than cash money service on command?

Aside from, I dunno, the gun violence epidemic-which is definitely no slouch in the All-American-ness Department, for sure, my dudes!

But, no, I would say gettin' paid is the core American Value above all others.

BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #49:

Could you ever see Vladimir Putin working at Taco Bell?

I just can't see it.

It's actual work, y'know?

Nothing to delegate to cannon fodder.

You're either up to the task or gone.

If you can't keep up with the pace of that dinner rush, your ass is bounced my dude.

No prison conscripts or bootlicking puppet ministers to take the fall for you.

Nope.

I can't see Putin making the scene at Taco Bell.

But what do you think, Dear Reader?

Write your comments on the screen with particolored street chalk, then read them out loud in a spot on imitation of my voice, and you can have Discourse At Home-what fun!!!

OPTIONAL RULE #10:

This is strictly for individuals who somehow find themselves becoming the President of the United States of America.

Basically, this is called Let's Keep This Thing Goin' People!

It works like this.

You're the President.

You've started an illegal war.

Or, you know, you've inherited an illegal war started by the previous administration.

This strictly optional rule requires you to do the following: keep on waging the illegal war no matter how deep the quagmire gets; and all the while you keep promising "victory" or "peace with honor" or what have you; and then you leave office with the illegal war still raging, but now it's the new guy's problem so zero biggie. You win if and only if you avoid prison for the rest of your days. Bonus points for catching bloated speaker's fees, consultant's fees, book deals, movie/TV/streaming/gaming deals, and podgrift deals.

Obviously, due to the corrosive effects upon the public's trust in government this is all strictly optional.

Play responsibly, ya'll!

Blows a kiss and a fart.

PEOPLE GET MAD . . . (#8)

. . . at the designated weirdos who turn out to be normies, and then they get mad at the designated normies who turn out to be weirdos.

People get mad.

THE NEW SUPERSTITIONS #1:

If you eat mint chocolate chip ice cream before you go out driving you are guaranteed to get nothing but green lights.

Because green.

EDITORIAL NOTE: This is fucking stupid . . . but at least it doesn't require you to burn a witch or have unnatural relations with an amphibian in the middle of a graveyard after midnight. So, some nuance for the Nuance Junkies.

THINGS NEVER SAID #5:

"Some days you just can't bear to part with an armed nuclear device. You've got your arms wrapped tightly around it. How many people will ever find out what you are about to find out, eh? You know it's true! Even now, there's a kind of cold, hard anti-cuddly thing going on that bursts through to being cuddly all over again. But this time you are the haplessly touch hungry pitbull, now you get to be the dog, you get to be the wiggly, can't-get-close-enough perfect one attempting, absurdly, to burrow into your heartless master's impenetrable flank! Go ahead. Make the 'woof-woof' noises. Pee on the floor. Whine for a liver treat. We are post-shame. Everyone's about to be post-sh-"

ANCILLARY PRODUCTS #9:

Deep fake hologram John Belushi set to star in remakes of The Notebook, Wired, Prefontaine, and Eat, Pray, Love.